- Email: [email protected]
Texas Medical Center struck by natural disaster
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News & Comment
TRENDS in Cell Biology Vol.11 No.9 September 2001
liver cancer research and that some colon cancer research has been carried out using cell lines from cervical tumours. However, with the mandatory testing of cell lines, which costs about $200 per sample, this problem could quickly be minimized, assuring the quality of published data. S.L.
FindaPhD.com
Virtual tutorials
E-Biosci takes shape Developed from the directory Research Topics in the Life & Chemical Sciences (RTLCS), FindaPhD.com enables final-year undergraduates and other graduates to search a directory of departments and projects in the life sciences, chemistry and biomedicine. The scheme is the Internet outlet for the Directory published by Sheffield Academic Press. Industrial scientists seeking academic collaborators and graduate students seeking postdoctoral positions also increasingly use the database. The database is fully searchable according to subject, keyword and geographical area. The transition to the Internet allows the directory to be updated continuously. New projects are added within a few days of submission. Importantly, access to the service is free of charge. www.FindaPhD.com D.S.
Which cell line is it anyway? A recent study has uncovered an astonishingly high level of misidentification of laboratory cell lines. Short tandem repeat (STR) profiling was used to examine 253 human cell lines and revealed that 36% were of a different type, or from a different species to that claimed. STR profiling is commonly used in forensic science and uses standard oligonucleotide primers to amplify polymorphic STR loci in the sample of interest. Automated analysis of the PCR products generates a numerical code specific for the sample. The authors suggest that STR profiling should provide the basis for an international reference standard for human cell lines and that all cell lines should be authenticated at the time they are being used [Masters J.R. et al. (2001) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 98, 8012–8017]. The misidentification of cell lines might have been extremely costly in terms of wasted time, effort and money. First author John Masters of University College London, UK, describes the situation as a ‘scandal’, and UK newspaper The Observer claims that breast cancer cells have been mistakenly used in http://tcb.trends.com
The EMBO-led E-Biosci initiative is scheduled to launch in prototype version this summer. E-Biosci is designed to be a European online resource working in synergy with PubMedCentral in the USA. It aims to pool European biological archives and data collections and protect commercially produced full-text material by integrating various payment methods. Searches will be possible in a number of different languages. Importantly, E-Biosci will not contain any non-peer-reviewed material. As well as being a portal for mass information, the site will act as host for the online publication of new articles, in particular data-intensive works. The first phase of the project is funded under the European Union’s Fifth Framework programme for an initial period of three years. http://www.e-biosci.org D.S.
Texas Medical Center struck by natural disaster In early June this year, tropical storm Allison swept through the southern United States, killing 20 people and causing billions of dollars worth of damage. Also badly hit was the Texas Medical Center in Houston, the world’s largest medical research complex, consisting of more than 40 member institutions, including two medical schools and 13 hospitals. Extensive flooding caused by the storm destroyed years of work, causing millions of dollars of damage to specialized equipment and drowning over 30 000 laboratory animals. These included many irreplaceable transgenic mouse colonies and also larger animals housed at the medical center. The Texas Medical Center lies in a region that is extremely prone to flooding during the hurricane season; however, tropical storm Allison struck the region twice, dropping volumes of rain that could be expected to occur only once a century. Scientists at the Texas Medical Center described the losses as ‘incalculable’ and ‘devastating’. The NIH and local officials have pledged to help in the recovery effort according to reports in the Houston Chronicle. S.L.
The Internet is now the routine first point of access for information. A new initiative sets out to make searching for this information clearer and easier by providing a directed framework to use. The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) Virtual Training Suite was launched in May this year by Michael Wills, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Technology, and Sir John Kingman, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, UK. Individual tutorials, including ‘Internet Bioresearcher’, written by Stuart Wilson of BIOME, University of Nottingham, UK, are linked to key resources in the relevant fields and are given by specialist ‘tour guides’ from research institutions, libraries and universities across the UK. Navigation through the site is particularly simple, with a user ‘links basket’ to accumulate particularly useful links during the tutorial and a glossary of useful technical terms. Print-optimized versions of the pages are also available for downloading. The scheme is a collaborative effort between 30 UK universities and aims to provide basic information skills to students, lecturers and researchers throughout the UK. The RDN Virtual Training Suite is at: www.vts.rdn.ac.uk D.S.
Royal Society proposes international human cloning moratorium On 20 June 2001, the Royal Society published a report in response to an inquiry by the UK House of Lords Committee on stem cell research. In the report, the Royal Society working group, chaired by Richard Gardner of Oxford University, addresses various questions relating to the current status of stem cell research and human cloning. The report supports a ban on human reproductive cloning and, on scientific grounds, proposes a worldwide moratorium, in
0962-8924/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
News & Comment
TRENDS in Cell Biology Vol.11 No.9 September 2001
liver cancer research and that some colon cancer research has been carried out using cell lines from cervical tumours. However, with the mandatory testing of cell lines, which costs about $200 per sample, this problem could quickly be minimized, assuring the quality of published data. S.L.
FindaPhD.com
Virtual tutorials
E-Biosci takes shape Developed from the directory Research Topics in the Life & Chemical Sciences (RTLCS), FindaPhD.com enables final-year undergraduates and other graduates to search a directory of departments and projects in the life sciences, chemistry and biomedicine. The scheme is the Internet outlet for the Directory published by Sheffield Academic Press. Industrial scientists seeking academic collaborators and graduate students seeking postdoctoral positions also increasingly use the database. The database is fully searchable according to subject, keyword and geographical area. The transition to the Internet allows the directory to be updated continuously. New projects are added within a few days of submission. Importantly, access to the service is free of charge. www.FindaPhD.com D.S.
Which cell line is it anyway? A recent study has uncovered an astonishingly high level of misidentification of laboratory cell lines. Short tandem repeat (STR) profiling was used to examine 253 human cell lines and revealed that 36% were of a different type, or from a different species to that claimed. STR profiling is commonly used in forensic science and uses standard oligonucleotide primers to amplify polymorphic STR loci in the sample of interest. Automated analysis of the PCR products generates a numerical code specific for the sample. The authors suggest that STR profiling should provide the basis for an international reference standard for human cell lines and that all cell lines should be authenticated at the time they are being used [Masters J.R. et al. (2001) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 98, 8012–8017]. The misidentification of cell lines might have been extremely costly in terms of wasted time, effort and money. First author John Masters of University College London, UK, describes the situation as a ‘scandal’, and UK newspaper The Observer claims that breast cancer cells have been mistakenly used in http://tcb.trends.com
The EMBO-led E-Biosci initiative is scheduled to launch in prototype version this summer. E-Biosci is designed to be a European online resource working in synergy with PubMedCentral in the USA. It aims to pool European biological archives and data collections and protect commercially produced full-text material by integrating various payment methods. Searches will be possible in a number of different languages. Importantly, E-Biosci will not contain any non-peer-reviewed material. As well as being a portal for mass information, the site will act as host for the online publication of new articles, in particular data-intensive works. The first phase of the project is funded under the European Union’s Fifth Framework programme for an initial period of three years. http://www.e-biosci.org D.S.
Texas Medical Center struck by natural disaster In early June this year, tropical storm Allison swept through the southern United States, killing 20 people and causing billions of dollars worth of damage. Also badly hit was the Texas Medical Center in Houston, the world’s largest medical research complex, consisting of more than 40 member institutions, including two medical schools and 13 hospitals. Extensive flooding caused by the storm destroyed years of work, causing millions of dollars of damage to specialized equipment and drowning over 30 000 laboratory animals. These included many irreplaceable transgenic mouse colonies and also larger animals housed at the medical center. The Texas Medical Center lies in a region that is extremely prone to flooding during the hurricane season; however, tropical storm Allison struck the region twice, dropping volumes of rain that could be expected to occur only once a century. Scientists at the Texas Medical Center described the losses as ‘incalculable’ and ‘devastating’. The NIH and local officials have pledged to help in the recovery effort according to reports in the Houston Chronicle. S.L.
The Internet is now the routine first point of access for information. A new initiative sets out to make searching for this information clearer and easier by providing a directed framework to use. The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) Virtual Training Suite was launched in May this year by Michael Wills, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Technology, and Sir John Kingman, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, UK. Individual tutorials, including ‘Internet Bioresearcher’, written by Stuart Wilson of BIOME, University of Nottingham, UK, are linked to key resources in the relevant fields and are given by specialist ‘tour guides’ from research institutions, libraries and universities across the UK. Navigation through the site is particularly simple, with a user ‘links basket’ to accumulate particularly useful links during the tutorial and a glossary of useful technical terms. Print-optimized versions of the pages are also available for downloading. The scheme is a collaborative effort between 30 UK universities and aims to provide basic information skills to students, lecturers and researchers throughout the UK. The RDN Virtual Training Suite is at: www.vts.rdn.ac.uk D.S.
Royal Society proposes international human cloning moratorium On 20 June 2001, the Royal Society published a report in response to an inquiry by the UK House of Lords Committee on stem cell research. In the report, the Royal Society working group, chaired by Richard Gardner of Oxford University, addresses various questions relating to the current status of stem cell research and human cloning. The report supports a ban on human reproductive cloning and, on scientific grounds, proposes a worldwide moratorium, in
0962-8924/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.